So what’s up? It’s been almost 3 months since I last posted here in this blog and the last two posts didn’t even seem like “real” posts from me. 🙂 Overall, I just posted less than 40 posts for the past year and just 4 in the past 4 months. Oh yea!
I’m sure you’ve heard me before coming up with a lot of alibis and excuses for the lack of posts and today, I would still do the same by saying that I’ve been busy the past year with my work primarily and other client tasks. But the difference is that I will not come up with a list this time of what to expect from this blog. But rather I would discuss some drastic changes going forward.
Reverting back to casual posting
One of the things that I’ve done in the past 2 years (more evidently the past year) is that I moved slowly from being a casual blogger that has passion for internet marketing and blogging to a blogger who wants to build expertise and strictly cater to that expertise. I started to “act” like a guru on something and thus wanted to connect to my audience as someone who knows A LOT about something rather than just simply being myself. Obviously this has burned me out to the point that I hated writing here anymore.
When I was just getting started about 4 years ago, I idolized Shoemoney because he’s just so ‘plain’. He writes something useful about our industry but he also writes a lot about ‘personal crap’ or things that he’s interested but most of is audience are not. And I used to post like that. I had a lot ‘childish’ posts about having a bunch of mouse for my PC, receiving gadgets from companies, and even love life posts. It’s not really “so professional” but its enjoying.
Going back to what I was doing the past year, it became clear that its “unfulfilling”. I started to work on things like capturing more newsletter subscribers, strategizing on funneling prospects to buyers, writing bait posts that will eventually get readers to get my incentives and all of those ‘Frank Kern’ type of ninja things. Of course, no offense to Frank, but I was not built that way.
And last but certainly not the least, Robb Sutton’s post about ‘Blogging needing to get back to its roots‘ made me realize a bunch of things as well. So props to you Rob!
What will change & what will not
Does this mean I’m not going to monetize this blog anymore? No of course! Ads are still there and will always be there forever. I haven’t really made that much money from ads recently (probably less than $1500 for the past year) however I still see a lot of value in the “spaces” of this blog. I’m not going to push this too much but ads will remain. 🙂
How about the usual ‘marketing’ shit like capturing email leads, funneling them, selling info products to them, upselling etc.? I will probably still however this will never ever be a priority. In fact, I don’t even think I’m going to do anything aside from getting some newsletters out. I don’t see myself putting out any product today, and in the future. 😉
How about the posts? As mentioned above, I will do more casual posts. More of “I feel good about writing this today” kind of thing. Maybe not so much as say posting cat pictures, or ranting about neighbors and colleagues and stuff. But it depends on how I feel. I’m sure I’m going to lose out some readers along the way but hey this is my blog.
I will probably be doing some massive changes to some pages to reflect the shift of focus for this blog. Sure, pages like Freebies, Why Subscribe to my Blog will remain unchanged but as mentioned, the blog will not revolve around showcasing those things anymore. I’d be happy if I get more and more readers however, as long as I’m feeling good about what I’m doing, then I will just continue it. 🙂
So whats next?
I don’t know! I’ll probably write next about the version 4.0 design of this blog and then some ramblings here and there. The one thing to keep in mind is that MelvinBlog will still continue to be an internet marketing /blogging blog however I wouldn’t be pressuring myself too much about coming up with guides and rich-content type of posts. I may put out some posts about a marketing strategy that worked well for me but that would be few and far between.
As I’m writing this, I’m actually getting more and more excited about this ‘rebirth’ in blogging. I haven’t really written anything on ANY other blogs of mine but that FOR SURE will change in the coming months. Either for the good or the bad, not much that I cared anyway. 😉